from Hacker News

These Guys Want to Hack Your Home And You Should Let Them

by devinfoley on 6/17/13, 4:56 PM with 15 comments

• by lifeisstillgood on 6/17/13, 8:11 PM

  Whoever does the PR for IFTTT needs a raise. That is supposed to be an article on home automation, and reads like a press release. Barely mentions the hardware vendors, the arduino hackers, the competing standards and the ways to get started. Just repeats the name of one web service!?

  Wow. Pay the firm whatever they ask.

• by elie_CH on 6/17/13, 8:32 PM

  I love the top comment

  "CKP obr4610 • 8 hours ago − User goes to flick on bathroom light switch...

  "Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Energy Conservation Program during these hours."

  "Dammit" goes to flush toilet...

  "Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Water Conservation Program during these hours."

  "fine then" goes to leave to go out to eat since refrigerated food spoiled...

  "Sorry Dave, But I cannot complete this command. The Government has activated the Curfew Program during these hours.""

• by modoc on 6/17/13, 6:27 PM

  Does anyone have recommendations for good vendor(s) for home automation devices/systems/software/etc...? I'd love my house to be more "smart" but not really sure how to approach it. I need stuff that is either hidden or good looking, works well with iOS and OS X. Ideally would love a combination of home automation, HVAC control, alarms (smoke, CO, etc...), and security.

  There's also some logic that I haven't seen offered, for instance: if someone drives up my driveway, I'd like to hear a chime (and/or get a text with a photo of the car). If they drive up at 2 AM I want to be woken up! Unless it's me or my wife (RFID chips in our bumpers for ID?). Etc...

• by outside1234 on 6/17/13, 6:40 PM

  For folks that are interested, I'm working on an open source platform called Nitrogen that helps you get devices online easily and communicating with applications using a consistent JavaScript development model. Still a little early but I'd love to find folks interested in hacking on it either as a user or contributor to the project.

  You can read more at: http://github.com/nitrogenjs/service

  </shamelessPlug>

• by fnordfnordfnord on 6/17/13, 6:21 PM

  This is kind of my pet project for the summer. I've already got the lights in my children's rooms done. I've got dawn/dusk sensing to turn off my outdoor audio system. I've got a temperature controlled attic-exhaust fan (my attic gets over 150F / 65C without it). I played with IFTTT a bit last year, but kind of forgot about it since I don't need it. But thinking about it again, I really do need it or something like it because the other residents of my house aren't programmers, but they might like to automate some action. I mostly use PachubeCosmXively for remote control of actions, but I don't think IFTTT has any integration with them. PachubeCosmXively can send emails based on trigger thresholds so it shouldn't be too hard to get something working. A great complement to IFTTT would be direct integration to an rPi or other open-ish platform cum home automation server.

• by speeder on 6/17/13, 7:29 PM

  I live in a house with automated lights, and I ABSOLUTELY HATE THEM.

  They turn on when I want them off...

  And turn off when I want them on...

  It is really, really, really annoying.

• by sdfjkl on 6/17/13, 7:49 PM

  If you're doing something like that, you should make damn sure it's NOT connected to the internet. Did you learn nothing the last few days?

• by PencilAndPaper on 6/17/13, 6:13 PM

  Has anyone watched Battlestar Galactica?